what waits off shore?

For All the Strange Monsters

Pink weather for strange monsters.

I’ve just returned from a tangent.

It started like this: mired into a world of my own creation on the page, moving characters around to suit my purpose, giving them something to say, or striking them mute as I see fit, it occurred to me that I could throw a catastrophe at them on the next page. Ha! My beloved characters have no idea what’s coming! They are going to buckle under the devastation. Oh, the ecstasy of destroying someone on the page!

And that’s when the strange sail appears at the horizon. Something I once knew coming back to me across the ocean of memory, a familiar phrase rising from behind the curvature of my own mind. Someone somewhere once referred to my kind as “strange monsters.”

Strange monsters. The moniker floats there at the edge of my planet, a brilliant distraction. Strange monsters, not an insult surely, but an honest affirmation. Where had the phrase come from? Who said it? Go chase it!

So I drop everything for the next hour to ransack my bookshelves and flip through every old anthology I suspect may hold the lexicon of strange monsters.

For all the strange monsters who no longer have the need or habit of explaining themselves to anybody.

Turns out strange monsters are from My Sister, O My Sister, a poem by May Sarton. I remember reading this almost 20 years ago and it knocked me out then. So I thought I would share it now, along with a recording of Sarton herself reading it aloud.

So here it is, for all the other strange monsters out there who’ve spent the past few days swimming around in the deep sea of self expression where households turn to filth and societal expectations have no hold. For all the other strange monsters who, when they look up from the flowing current of their handwritten scrawl see an on-shore world looking back at them with that uncomprehending stare.

For all the strange monsters who no longer have the need or habit of explaining themselves to anybody.

You’re welcome… This poem actually reminds me of you a lot! And I love the way she reads, so clear and full of purpose and with no trace of apology in her voice. Like you, when you’re reading poems to us!

I love this posting. And it was such a pleasure to listen to May Sarton read her poem – thank you for that gift today! I also just took a moment to reread Packed – what a lovely ode to our days together, airports and underwear.